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Saturday, October 04, 2008

Carnival of Genealogy, 57th Edition

Welcome to the October 4, 2008 edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. The topic for this edition is: I Read it in the News! We're looking at family history information found in newspapers. Newspapers really are a wonderful source of information and sometimes they tell us stories that never got passed down in the family. Many of these articles are entertaining, some are merely informative, but all are worth reading! There are quite a few articles here so I suggest you pour yourself a mug of hot cider, light a fire in the fireplace, pull an afghan out of the closet, and start up the laptop for a cozy evening of reading. Enjoy!

Sandusky Library Archives Research Center presents How They Earned Their First Dollar posted at Sandusky History, saying, "A distant cousin of mine, John B. Taylor, told how he earned his first dollar in a newspaper article from a 1921 Sandusky Star Journal article. The article was found by a search through the database Newspaper Archive. From Dorene at Sandusky Library"

Bob Kramp presents Cowboys from West of the Potomac posted at Life's Journey, saying, "My father used to work for the Washington Evening Star in District of Columbia. My brother and I went down to visit Dad in his workplace in Summer of 1948, dressed in our spiffy Cowboy outfits that Mom hand-sewed for us. We made a big enough splash to get our pictures taken and published in the Junior Star Section of the newspaper. Yeee-haaa."

Bill West presents THE VALUE OF AN OX posted at West in New England, saying, "I posted just this clipping to my blog last December without any commentary, and told Terry Thornton at the time that I should have entitled the post "The Value of An Ox". So now that I've done a little digging on the information in the article, I decided to use that title!"

Randy Seaver presents I Read about Benjamin Franklin Seaver in the newspapers posted at Genea-Musings, saying, "Randy found a gold mine of information about a distant Seaver cousin after a book author asked him for information. The recently published historical novel "Timely Heroes" by Gardner Hale Russell used information from the newspaper articles from 1805 to 1807 to tell the story of Benjamin Franklin Seaver (1780-1814)."

Wendy Littrell presents Extra! Extra! posted at All My Branches Genealogy, saying, "More proof that my family spends a lot of time clipping news articles - BUT - I'm thrilled that so many old news clippings have survived and that they are in my possession."

Apple presents Black & White & Read All Over posted at Apple's Tree, saying, "Newspapers have been a mainstay of my research for the last several years. From the items I've found I have filled in huge chunks of my family's history. For this edition of the CoG I've recapped my favorites and provided links as most of them were written before I started Apple's Tree."

Amy Coffin presents And When They Met, It was MURDER!!! posted at We Tree, saying, "Two men vying for one woman leads to death. No, it's not a television soap opera plot. It's just another day in rural Louisiana. Find out how this 1889 love triangle hangs on my family tree."

Midge Frazel presents Wild and Wooley posted at Granite in My Blood, saying, "Read all about the Scholfield Bros. who came to America from England with plans to make the first woolen manufacturing business in this country."

Jasia presents Polish Daily News Stories posted at Creative Gene, saying, "My granduncle worked for one newspaper and was featured in articles from another newspaper. So you could say he made (typeset) the news and he made (was featured in) the news! Check out the story of this career newspaperman!"

Smallest Leaf presents The brothers Donnelly: Tragedy in the Pennsylvania coal mines, 1893 posted at Small-leaved Shamrock, saying, "The life of a 19th-century Irish coal miner in Pennsylvania was never easy - for him or for his family. Imagine the tragedy of mine explosion taking the lives of two brothers: both married and both with young children. The March 19, 1893 Mahanoy Plane mine explosion was devastating for the Donnelly family. The newspaper reports give us a glimpse into the accident, but leave many questions behind about the family and how they handled life in its aftermath."

Sasha Mitchell presents Thomas Donovan Drowned posted at Memory Lane, saying, "On Ancestry.com I learned the sad news that my GGG Grandfather died by drowning. As a genealogist I was happy to find it, in spite of the tragedy."

footnoteMaven presents Read All About It - In The Newspapers posted at footnoteMaven, saying, "It is the wise Family Historian, who understands that we can no more take credit for the accomplishments of our ancestors, than we can take blame for their failures. Both appearing very often in the newspapers."

Steve Danko presents A Danko Obituary Quiz posted at Steve's Genealogy Blog, saying, "Members of the Danko family can try to match up excerpts from the obituaries with the names of the ancestors and other relatives to whom they refer. Others can just read to learn something about the rich lives of my Danko relatives. After writing this up, I thought that some might find this quiz a little ghoulish, but I decided that's OK since Halloween is just four weeks away!"

That concludes this edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. I hope you enjoyed it and learned from it. The message here is, newspapers are an excellent source of family history information!

And now it's time for a Call For Submissions! The topic for the next edition of the COG will be: Halloween Hauntings... Fact or Fiction? We're going to have some fun with the Carnival of Genealogy this time around. Halloween is coming up in a few weeks. In keeping with the spirit of the season, write a story about or including one of your ancestors. It can be fact or fiction. Don't tell which it is (until after October 15 when the COG is published), let your readers guess. We should all get some great comments as readers try to determine if our Halloween genea-story is fact or fiction! Was your ggg grandmother a witch? Did you live in a haunted house when you were growing up? Were there bats in Aunt Betty's belfry? Did you ever meet up with a ghost when you were looking for an ancestor's grave? See if you can stump us! The deadline for submissions is October 15th.

To All COG Participants: Please use a descriptive phrase in the title of any articles you plan to submit and/or write a brief description/introduction to your articles in the "comment" box of the blogcarnival submission form. This will give readers an idea of what you've written about and hopefully interest them in clicking on your link. Introductions for your articles will not be provided for you due to the volume of articles submitted. Thank you!

Great stories. I'm still reading, but wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your work in putting this together. A newspaper article was one of my favorite finds when I first started my family history research.